SSFS Farm Blog March 2026: Wildfire Lettuce

It’s been a long, dreary winter.  Not only was it colder than normal, the number  of cloudy days this season also seemed disproportionately high. Sunny days were far and few between. And, sun is important in the winter because it works to keep the ground temperatures up during the day so they don’t drop quite as low at night. So, I have been pretty concerned all winter about the onions and garlic that we planted this fall and will hopefully harvest this spring.

Happily,  they seem to be handling it quite well and are doing pretty great, all things considered. We “should” get about 80lbs of garlic and 150lbs of onions if they reach their potential.

But, what’s absolutely shocking to me is the lettuce from last fall. There are two rows of “wildfire lettuce” that have amazed me.  During the fall, we planted it a few weeks later than I would have liked, and we only got one decent cutting from it in October for the cafeteria.  On top of that, germination was kind of sporadic.  The irrigation was not functioning in the fall so it did not get as much water as it should have. I was somewhat disappointed because it’s a premium mix and I should have been able to get at least three cuttings from it instead of the one. Truth be told, I had pretty much written it off.

To my surprise, I noticed it was still a little green when the snow first melted. A couple weeks later it had actually grown, and it’s currently flourishing.  My assumption is that all the snow on the ground for so long actually acted like a blanket, a phenomenon we don’t see very much around here but hear about up north.  With it doing so well, my lower school classes will be cutting it for the cafeteria right after Spring Break!

OK, So why am I so happy over 100’ of lettuce surviving? And with so many different types of greens out there, why did I decide to plant one of the most expensive lettuce mixes on the market to be our first crop? It certainly would have made more sense to start with the bar a little lower. 

Well, at the very beginning of the school year, Alice Chmil, 8th grade science teacher and all around great colleague, said that the school had undergone a wildfire of sorts. Almost one year ago we were told school was closing, and it would be a monumental and nearly impossible task to keep it open. And in two weeks and some change, our community accomplished an unprecedented feat to raise enough money to not only stay open, but to flourish for the future. 

In Meeting For Worship, Alice compared it to a wildfire. To be clear, the news ripped through our community, it left a wake of damage–some of which will never be fully repaired–and it changed the landscape in ways we could not have predicted. But, as the new school year began, it felt like new growth emerging from the forest. A new path was opened up and a revitalization of the landscape could take place. And what an amazing and positive school year it’s been. 

So naturally I desperately wanted “wildfire” lettuce to be the first thing we harvested. And although we did get some, it was not the boom I had hoped for.  

But seeing that darn lettuce proudly pop right back up this spring has been a timely reminder of a bunch of things for me. Great things sometimes take a little bit of time.  Positive things can emerge from negative events. The path forward isn’t always linear. Snow actually can insulate plants, and our community is pretty amazing!